Diagonal Stripes and Flowers

Just a quick post before heading out.  I did two or possibly three, don't quite remember, coats of Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau.  I used Konad special polish in white and SHANY plate SH23 for the stripes.  These stripes are much thinner than the one available on the first set of BundleMonster plates.  The length of the SHANY stripes image is also longer than the BundleMonster one, but the width  is approximately the same.  The flowers are puffy nail stickers that I forgot I even had.  Found them while cleaning some junk off my desk.

Polish Gifts #1 + Grey Glitter Snowflakes

Long time no write.  Not because I was super busy or anything just that I haven't been photographing my nails much.  I didn't really paint my nails much during the holidays. When I did do my nails they usually didn't last all that long.

Hope everyone had a happy holiday and a good start to the new year.  To start off this post I have a pic of a set of mini polishes of Quo by Orly polishes that my friend Amy got me for Christmas. (Hi Amy, that was your shout out, though you had to wait a while for it, thanks for the polishes.)

Quo by Orly polishes are available at Shoppers Drug Mart stores and I had never tried them before so this set was a great introduction to them.  No pictures of any of them yet, but I will get on it.  Ah I just realized that the bottom of the pic is missing the names for the bottom row.  D'oh.  I'll list out all polishes.

From left to right, top row:
Very Vixen, Mystic Night, Garnet, Precious, Sapphire Sparkle, Cold Stone, Rock Show, Rock Star and Night Sky.

Bottom row:
Turquoise Moonlight, Celestial Star, First Class, Filthy Rich, Red Hot, Wine and Dine, Old Hollywood, Love Game and True Love.

Most of the polishes are glittery or shimmery and seems like they may work best as layering polishes.  However 3 thin coats will get you full coverage with minimal or no bald spots.  The tiny brush is not to my liking, but that's OK.

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Next up nails.  I did this some time last week.

Base colour was two coats of American Apparel Echo Park.  I forgot to include Konad special polish in white in the photo, but that's OK.  Used Konad white to stamp with and plates SH17 for the snowflake on the index finger, RA 119 for the thumb and ring finger and HB23 for the smaller not so well stamped snowflakes on the middle and pinky fingers.  I also did some glitter snowflakes with Color Club Sugarplum, but they didn't turn out as nice as I thought they would.  They kind of just looked like blobs of glitter on the nail.  Topped everything with CoverGirl Boundless Color in Disco Dazzle.

That's it for today. 

Green on Green + Nude Stars

I've got a couple of manis to show today and first up is this sort of festive green on green one.  Two coats or maybe three of Barry M Spring Green with Color Club Perfectly Mol-Ten as the stamping colour.  I used SHANY plate SH20 for the pattern.  This pattern is wide enough for my thumb, but it's kind of on the short side.  Perfect coverage for shorter nails, longer nails would need to be double stamped.

Next up a nude colour with some sparkly stars.

Nails are still short so I thought I would change the shape for a more elongated and feminine look.  Three coats of joe Latte as the base.  For the stars I used a flimsy piece of plastic (scotch tape works too) and painted on a layer of Color Club Gingerbread (polish on left).  Waited for that to dry and then painted half of it with Color Club Take the Stage.  After everything was dried I peeled off the dry polish and used a star paper punch to punch out the stars.  Put some top coat on the area that I wanted the star and then placed the star on top.  Finished it off with two coats of top coat.

Here's a slightly better look at the stars.

I think I've done something similar to this before, but I can't remember when.  It's probably somewhere

Santa + Reindeers Stamped

I used images from SHANY plates, the flying reindeer from SH13 and the Santa face from SH03.  I'm not sure if it's suppose to be Santa's face or just a bearded old man's face.  I thought it was going to turn out smaller, but it filled up most of my shorter pinky nail.

Two coats Etude House LUCIDarling 04 Indigo Blue, stamped with Konad white and added a little bit of Color Club Beyond the Mistletoe to add some sparkle.

Red Angel + SHANY Stamping Plates

A friend helped me buy these plates and sent them to me from the U.S.

First read about Red Angel plates from Canadian Nail Fanatic and the SHANY plates I read about from omgnoodles.   I haven't really stamped with the plates all that much yet.  I broke two nails trying to remove the battery cover from a cordless phone.  So I have shortie nails and haven't really been painting my nails much.  Waiting for them to grow a bit longer 'cause I they are too short for my liking.

There are 21 plates in the Red Angel set, 12 plates with full nail designs, 2 with french tips and 7 plates with individual images.  The plates are the same size as Konad and BundleMonster plates, but they have no backing to them.  Not really a problem I just use some contact paper/drawer liner to cover the backs.  The plates stamp perfectly fine.  The full nail designs aren't wide enough for my thumb, but I take that as a norm.  Some or maybe most of the individual images are quite large so if you've got short nails it may fill up all or most your nail.  A few images might be slightly similar to those of Konad and BundleMonster.  Also I mislabeled the numbering of the plates, they should read like RA 120.

There are 25 plates in the SHANY set, 5 full nail designs, 1 french tip and 19 plates with individual images.  These plates are OK.  Some of the designs here are also slightly similar to Konad or BundleMonster.  The plates are slightly smaller than other plates and also have no backing.  The blue film that covers the top of the plate is very difficult to peel off.  But once you've lifted a large enough section off the edges you can pull it off in one large piece.  A few plates also have random scratches/dents on them, but they don't affect the images, the scratches are often in between them.  Everything stamps just fine, except for the french tips, but I think that's more user error on my part.  The full nail designs vary in size, some cover my entire thumb while others don't.  Weird, but that's how it is.

And a bit of a comparison between Konad, BundleMonster, Red Angel and SHANY plates.  They all seem to have a similar full nail circle pattern so you can compare the images and stamp sizes.

Looking at RA 105 it's not really circles, but looks close enough.  If I ever wanted to do various circular patterns on my nails all at once I've got options to make them all different.

And finally a nail look using one of the plates.  The last mani before the breakage.

Not quite centred, but still like.  Two coats American Apparel Poppy stamped with Konad special polish in blue and Red Angel plate RA 105.